Trends in Digital Video Advertising

It’s hard to avoid the chatter around digital video advertising. According to eMarketer, ad spending in digital video will grow 20.8% to $36.01 billion in 2019. If you want to catch up on the trends quickly, eMarketer has compiled a roundup of stats and insights in its report “Digital Video Advertising Trends 2019,” sponsored by Outbrain.

Here are the highlights:

Where is the money going? Connected TV and over-the-top (OTT), as well as mobile devices, programmatic exchanges, and social media platforms. “Advertisers are investing more in ad-supported video-on-demand (AVOD) content and in ads that run next to live digital video.”

The biggest spend is programmatic, including social media video. eMarketer forecasts that 82.2% of total digital video spend will be transacted programmatically in 2019. “That’s slightly less than the 84.9% of total digital display spend that will be transacted programmatically this year.” For the next few years, the portion of programmatic spend that goes to video is expected to remain steady.

Connected TV will edge out mobile video. “Mobile’s share of programmatic video will peak in 2020 at 53.9%. By 2021, its share will dip as ad buyers ramp up investments in areas such as Connected TV.”

Native video ads will hold steady around 38%. While eMarketer projects native video to capture $62.7% of the larger umbrella of display ad spending, this format is forecast to reach only 38.7% of digital video ad budgets, specifically, in 2020. (“Native video” is video that is uploaded to or created on social networks and played in-feed.)

Mobile does not dominate the video market. “Even though it falls under the display umbrella, video is the only digital ad format where more ad dollars are spent outside mobile channels.”

Social video ads are the future. eMarketer forecasts that social video ad spending in the U.S. will reach $14.89 billion in 2021, growing 44% from 2019. It will then account for 30.4% of total video ad spending. “We also estimate that overall video ad spending will increase 62.1% between 2019 and 2023.”

Connected TV is seeing massive growth, but still has unresolved challenges. “Connected TV ad spending is increasing significantly, but it still faces issues when it comes to the fragmentation of inventory, lack of standardized measurements, frequency capping and ad fraud.”